One of the benefits of homeschooling is that it is generally unnecessary to hold to a rigid schedule. In other words, I let my kids sleep until they are no longer tired. Even my own two children have different schedules–the older one wakes up first, almost at the same time every day–the younger one can [...]
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Nature principle
The compelling reasons kids need nature were explained factually and forcefully by Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. In fact, that book inspired major new efforts to reconnect kids with nature including Children & Nature Network, National Wildlife Federation’s Green Hour, and No Child Left Inside. Louv [...]
Educating children in a violent world
I was recently asked to write a column for a national education magazine. When the editor told me the theme of the issue was educating children in a world of violence, I immediately thought to myself, “That’s precisely the problem—most children are being educated in a world of violence.” Here I very specifically mean the [...]
Caring education and meaningful democracy
Is it possible to have caring education or a meaningful democracy in a culture that is fundamentally competitive, materialistic, and technocratic? What has brought many of us to this conference is the realization that our political, social, and economic problems are ultimate rooted in a cultural context—the pattern of meanings that guide our lives. The [...]
Taking risks and breaking rules
Albert Einstein once said that it is a miracle curiosity survives formal education. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t. When my husband Rolf and I decided almost 40 years ago that we wouldn’t send our then-unborn daughters to school, we knew that curiosity was one of the precious traits we didn’t want to risk them losing. In [...]
The peaceful school
“You must be so patient.” If I have heard that once, I’ve heard it a hundred times. I must be so patient. Patient to homeschool my kids. What is patience anyway? According to Wikipedia patience is “the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on [...]
Education for a green society
There is a strong connection between the business world and the modern institution of schooling. Historians of education have explained how schools as we know them were profoundly shaped by the influence of business leaders and by educators who adopted theories and techniques from the economic realm of society. Many major turning points, new initiatives, [...]
How to listen and how to be heard
Do you really want a dead cat on your desk?” When a teacher took a parent’s phone call at the end of another busy school day, she was taken aback by the question. She couldn’t figure out why a first grader in her class came home telling his mother that their recently deceased family pet [...]
The lifelong journey
It was a cloudy day in April, 2004. It was cloudy in my mind. And storm clouds were brewing over my son as he refused to write his name on his painting. I knew the path we were traveling was getting weedy and we needed to find another way. We are now extremely happy with [...]
Pass the Elmer’s please
“Education is the Glue of Democracy,” reads a billboard towering over I-90 just outside the birthplace of the American Revolution. “It is a sticky business these days, isn’t it?” I mused to myself as I zoomed by. Then a more serious thought: “Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t the right of every student [...]
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